Judge weighs suit to stop pickleball at Sinnissippi Park

ROCKFORD — A competitive pickleball match is playing out in Winnebago County court.

Kevin Haas

ROCKFORD — A competitive pickleball match is playing out in Winnebago County court.

Judge Eugene Doherty considered a request Thursday from Rockford Park District attorney Michael Scheurich to dismiss a lawsuit that aims to stop pickleball from being played in Sinnissipi Park.

The case isn’t likely to end even if Doherty grants the motion. Attorney Theodore Liebovich, who is representing the two women who filed the complaint to stop "ping" and "pop" sounds they hear from courts, said he’s prepared to amend the complaint if required. If that happens, "I don’t think a trial is that far down the line," he said.

Jeanette Haskell and Barbara Friel filed a complaint June 6 in circuit court seeking an injunction to stop pickleball play.

The complaint claims the "pop" sound the ball makes as it flies off players’ paddles is a nuisance. The sound is "like a hammer blow on a blacksmith’s anvil" and "the noise filters into every part of their property and household," according to the complaint.

You can hear the sound for yourself by watching this YouTube video.

Pickleball is played with wooden paddles and a perforated plastic ball similar to a whiffle ball. It’s played on a badminton-sized court with a tennis net lowered to 34 inches.

Scheurich said Thursday that a private nuisance must be an "unreasonable" invasion. He said the suit doesn’t allege that the plaintiffs aren’t overly sensitive to noise or that the sound interferes with daily life. He told Doherty that pickleball doesn’t qualify as a public nuisance either and that he didn’t expect anyone except the two plaintiffs to object to the game being played at Sinnissippi.

Sinnissippi Park also features a walking path, playground and an outdoor music amphitheater, which Doherty noted produces more noise than the pickleball game. But, Liebovich countered, that noise doesn’t compare to the constant, "obnoxious" sound of pickleball.

"All you have to do is go online and look up pickleball and you’ll find comments from all over the country from people who are up in arms about pickleball being next to their places of residence because of the obnoxious noise," Liebovich said in an interview with the Register Star after the court hearing. "I’ve had people call me from three different states wanting to know how it was going in this case."

(You can read other news stories about pickleball noise complaints HERE, from the Wall Street Journal in 2010, or HERE, or "the great pickleball kerfuffle of 2012.")

Sinnissippi Park was home to two tennis courts until the Park District reconfigured them into six pickleball courts and named it The Sinnissippi Pickleball Center in September 2010.

Doherty said he plans to issue a written decision on the district’s motion to dismiss before the case returns to court May 16 for a status hearing.